a limit to the
demands of the Porte; but after their departure, we are told, the
current value of agricultural produce again fell so low that it was
impossible for the cultivator to live, and this circumstance, along with
the renewed exactions of the rulers and officials, once more brought
ruin upon the peasantry. In 1820 Wilkinson, who, it must be remembered,
was Consul at Bucarest, and who was far from being enamoured of Russia,
says: 'During my residence in the Principalities several instances have
occurred within my observation of very active exertion on the part of
Russia to keep the accustomed system of extortion in restraint, and to
relieve the inhabitants from oppression, and such exertion has certainly
on many occasions prevented the condition of the inhabitants from
becoming worse.'[168]

But that the ultimate design of Russia was to secure and incorporate the
Principalities as part of her general scheme of aggression, there can be
no doubt in the mind of anyone who has followed her operations previous
to the Crimean campaign. That and subsequent events may be said to
belong to contemporary history; but we must briefly refer to such
incidents of the war as affected the Danubian Principalities and laid
the foundation of Roumanian freedom. The Emperor Nicholas had picked a
wolf-and-lamb quarrel with the Porte, of which the ostensible ground was
the protection of subjects professing the Greek Catholic faith in the
'holy places;' and little expecting, perhaps little caring, that he
would arouse the jealousy of France and England, he had sent an
ultimatum to the Porte, demanding the right of intervention in
conformity with the Treaty of Kainardji, threatening the invasion and
occupation of the Danubian Principalities in default of immediate
acquiescence. Not having received the satisfaction he required, he
ordered General Gortschakoff to cross the Pruth and to take possession
of and hold the Principalities. This was done in the month of July 1853.
In September the Turkish Commander-in-Chief on the Danube demanded an
immediate evacuation of those territories, and, failing compliance, war
was declared. For some time the Russians, fearing the enmity of Austria,
which had massed troops on the Wallachian frontier, remained on the
defensive, but in October Omar Pasha assumed the aggressive, sending a
small force across the Danube at Vidin, and it was thought that the
straggle between the contending forces would take plac